## 43 Finding the right port

No, it's not a question of Ships and Fishes but of video games and especially retrogaming games. Today, the games are quite the same between Linux, Windows or Mac OSX...and even between the Xbox One and the PS4/5 versions. But before that there were different versions of a same game, depending on the hardware. Was it a 6502 or a Z80 CPU? With an additional graphics circuit ?  Was it an arcade game and you could dream of an Arcade set at home. Was it an Atari ST or Amiga native game ? Was it a basic game written for a specific 70s computer and adapted for others? Was it a SNES or Megadrive native game ? Many questions that had sometimes answers in the year of release but difficult to find today for a retro gamer.

Some youtube channels are comparing ports and it's very interesting. If you had a ZX81 or a ZX Spectrum, it was difficult to find good ports compared with other computers like Amstrad CPC, C64 or Atari 8 bits computers. The computer had limited graphics mode with less colors. But some are good games either if you only had that computer at home. I had a CPC but now, I must consider that often C64 ports were a little better. Now, new games are not released for both platforms but for same CPU at least. 

WIth emulation, it's also a little more complicated with arcade games. You had MAME to play that before and between the different versions of MAME it was difficult to find the right ROM set. Now you have fork like FBNeo and it's also a different ROM set to find. On ROM websites, it's often not listed and you have the arcade set at home, you don't want to dump that. OK, it's mostly illegal to have such a rom but it's the only way to discover the original version of the game. A game like OutRun, for example had very bad ports in the 80s on several computers and consoles, even with 16 bits. Remakes were better later. So now, the right port is often the arcade port...or the remake on PS3, Xbox 360. Just difficult to play because it was on the store and you don't have access to the store now.

That's another point today with the disappearance of physical media. Emulation and Dumped game will be the solution. Even now, for new NES, SNES of Megadrive game, it's expensive and difficult to release a physical cartridge...but so easy to find it as a file on Itch.io or other sites. It's also more easy to find a Windows version emulating the original hardware. You don't need to configure RetroArch or emulators. Same problems with old DOS games with the new versions you can find in GOG or reboots. With emulation, you have the CPU speed issue and sometimes the game is running too fast. In Arcade games, you also had switch options on the set to choose difficulty. It's not always available in you emulation soft. If you have played Ghost'n Goblins, you certainly want an easy and unlimited lives version. 

The way we play now is certainly different than before. We have much more games available each week than before. If you look at Steam release in a month, it's much more than Atari 5200 games in the life of the console. And with unknown computers of the 70s or 80s, it's worse. Not easy to be focus on just a game or two when you have such an offer. With my small reviews each month on the french blog, it's obvious.

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